Is a pardon unlikely?
Posts by Goobertee
79 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jun 2011
There's gall – and then there's the security director who stole and resold 41 government-owned networking switches
RasPad 3.0 converts Raspberry Pi 4 to a tablet – be prepared for some quirks
Firefox to burn FTP out of its browser, starting slowly in version 77 due in April
LibreOffice 6.4 nearly done as open-source office software project prepares for 10th anniversary
Re: Which is the best version?
I don't know the answer to your specific question. I've been using the version, 5.1.x.x, packaged with Linux Mint, a version or so (of Mint) back in time. It gets all the updates, apparently. A long while ago it told me it was the end of the line for the version of LO I was using, so I needed to update. That may be the only time I actually had to reinstall, rather than just upgrade in place, at least in my memory. Been working for me.
HP to hike upfront price of printer hardware as ink biz growth runs dry
Re: At the risk of topic drift, can I ask for a recommendation for a mono laser...
Brother lasers for the last several years (maybe 2012?) can be used with a "generic" PCL5e driver, including double-sided if the printer has it. That's what I use on Linux. Cartridges and drums (separate on Brother) are available from various sources and I've had good luck with most of the second-source items I've used. I'm using a Brother HL2270DW (double-side, wireless) probably vintage 2011 and it's still going strong. Wish I could comment on newer printers, but I'm happy with what I have and can't think of a reason to replace it.
There are always negative reviews in the ratings and it's hard to say whether they're shills or genuinely bad items that got by quality control.
Lucas Pope: Indie games visionary makes pen-pushing feel like an exciting career choice
Old fart just visiting
I've never been a gamer (ignoring Flight Simulator) but have been a programmer in a variety of roles for almost half a century. Your comments--impressively readable to someone who isn't in the business--are interesting and have me curious about what I'm seeing. My grandson is replacing his motherboard and some other components, so maybe I can scrounge enough the hardware to at least see what is going on.
The Linux comments got me, too. I had forgotten there was another OS in common use.
You monsters: Screen time murders your kid's imaginary friend – until they reach school age
More households invite creepy smart speakers indoors: Arch-slurper Google top dog for Q1
A quick cup of coffee leaves production manager in fits and a cleaner in tears
And then there are the Girls Scouts
Some forty plus years ago, my daughter was a Girl Scout. (This is in the US of A.) A large mass of little girls was invited to the Science Center for an overnight "camping" experience. There were little girls in sleeping bags with their own little pillows everywhere. The ones not afraid of snakes (in cages) slept in the "nature" area. Others slept in the halls and various rooms of the building. One group slept in the "Technology" area, which included the data processing area, exposed so they could see it. Unfortunately, the fairly large minicomputer (this was 1979, give or take) had numerous flashing lights and fans, which disturbed some of the girls' sleep.
So they unplugged it.
Only plebs use Office 2019 over Office 365, says Microsoft's weird new ad campaign
Re: Price?????
<<Office 97 was pretty much all you needed>>
Thank you, mix. I've been sitting here trying to remember which it was. Back when the earth was young and I was teaching in a university, I'd tell my students to buy '97 if they had to buy because everything worked. In addition, the Help files were on the local computer, so you didn't have to have an Internet connection to use them, as with later versions.
That was before I retired and switched to Libre Office.
Windows Defender update: So secure, it wouldn't let Secure-Boot Windows PCs, er, boot
Bish, Bash... gosh! Good ol' Bourne Again Shell takes a bow as it reaches version five-point-zero
A year after Logitech screwed over Harmony users, it, um, screws over Harmony users: Device API killed off
Sysadmin misses out on paycheck after student test runs amok
Facebook Messenger backdoor demand, bail in Bitcoin, and lots more
Re: Reason for resistance
A third factor is that nobody has shown for sure (1) that uncrackable encryption that can be read only by the "good guys" and never by the "bad guys" actually exists or can be created, and (2) how we identify with 100% certainty which are the good guys and which are the bad guys so the bad guys can NEVER get in. .
Linux kernel 4.18 delayed: Bug ate my rc7, says Linus Torvalds
Azure certifications are awful, Microsoft admits, so it has made new ones
This side of the pond, too
Years ago, I was a department head at a midwest USA university. Somebody high in the food chain decided the university ought to be good for something practical. Big meeting with 20+ administrators and it turned out preparing students for MCSE certification was going to be it. Yes, it hurt my head then, too. Two staff members (not faculty) and I were assigned to develop the curriculum and the process.
We spent considerable time and effort, plus the hourly pay for the two staff members, and made some progress. (Being a faculty member and an administrator, my time was presumed to have no dollar value.) Then the fellow who was following the updates from MS told us the exam was being discontinued in a few months. It would be replaced by something whose content had not yet been identified. Awshit, WTF, and that sort of thing. Being much younger, we didn't know this sort of thing happened.
The vice president who made the assignment was not noted for being sympathetic with subordinates' problems. We documented our efforts and the new information as well as we could, then got an appointment with the dean. Showed him our efforts and he did the awshit and WTF thing, too. He called for an appointment with the vice president and we got in that day. I had the information ready and explained it, expecting really bad things. In quite a surprise, the VP said sounded like a moving target not worth chasing and we should just shut it down.
Security guard cost bank millions by hitting emergency Off button
When lots of red strobe lights is good
Near the end of the previous millennium I was a small part of a small part of the fire protection for a petroleum tank farm and truck filling facility. Gasoline was the major product, with diesel close behind. Not surprisingly, fire was thought of as a bad thing.
The first time I went to training I was dazzled by a few dozen red strobe lights almost illuminating the entire facility. The strobe lights were reminding the people at the facility that the automatic extinguishing system was disabled. Our unit's training involved putting out fires in tanks of gasoline and diesel and they didn't want the system to go off.
The sensors were so sensitive that at an earlier date, someone started welding in front of another facility up the road and it triggered the system. Instantly, 2000 lbs (almost 1000 Kg) of sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) dropped from the ceiling of the truck filling area, making five tank trucks and the entire area look like a blizzard.
Regrettably, the system had been tested and they didn't need confirmation. The employees at the tank farm then had to get another 2000 lbs of NaHCO3 from stock and dump it in bins twelve feet off the ground. That involved having a small number of people doing a great deal of work high off the ground as a tall forklift delivered the bags of soda.
Mirror mirror on sea wall, spot those airships, make Kaiser bawl
Re: Tucker Microphones
Wow. Just wow. I read the modern stuff and, for better or worse, understand a lot of it because of what I did for 40 years. But I read articles like this and some other technologies from the last century and before, sitting there thinking they could not have done all of that back then--but they did.
Thank you, TDog, for sharing.
User stepped on mouse, complained pedal wasn’t making PC go faster
Dude who claimed he invented email is told by judge: It's safe to say you didn't invent email
That was fast... unlike old iPhones: Apple sued for slowing down mobes
Re: "To provide a better experience to customers"
The explanation I read said the updates were changing the sequencing of the operations, not that the speed of the processor. Rather than have multiple high-energy consuming operations happening (essentially) simultaneously, space them out over time so the peak battery drain is diminished.
If that doesn't change based on the capacity of the battery, there won't be any speeding up with a new battery.
Man sues date for cinema texting fiasco, demands $17.31
EFF dinks HP Inc finks in rinky-dink ink stink
Re: Pay Later, Not Pay now.
My wife is a elementary teacher. When she moved to a new school and went to set up her new room, her administrator told her to look at the weekend newspaper ads (this is the USA) and pick the cheapest color inkjet she could find. My wife then called me and asked me to look at the ads for her. I'd bet the whole school could hear me screaming, "Noooooo!!!!" from six miles away.
I sent my wife an email to take to the administrator that I would buy a reasonably priced (found a Dell for $120) color laser which would remain mine forever, if the school would buy the replacement toner cartridges. The administrator agreed. I put several quite visible tags with my name (not my wife's) on the printer and everybody was happy, My wife retired and we have a nice low-mileage color printer.
'Please label things so I can tell the difference between a mouse and a microphone'
Re: Label you, label me, label us all together
During earlier times, recruits came from the countryside with few of the finer skills, but many of the "practical" skills of their lives. Many could tell the difference between hay and straw, so a wisp of each was tied to their left and right boots, respectively, and the cadence was,
"Hay foot, straw foot, hay foot, straw foot...."
Google's brand new OS could replace Android
Re: How does using the Linux kernel prevent Google from distributing Android updates?
"...GPL poison-pill-patent-clause license...".
Oh, good! It's the old FUD that GPL takes away all your rights and your firstborn children and your dog runs away and everything. That's not the GPL, Ms/Mr AC. The GPL is a choice of license, not a surrender.
So how are you and Steve and Bill and Satya getting along these days fighting the software cancer?
Don't touch this! Seven types of open source to dance away from
>>Licensing being the thorny issue that it is, this point is probably inevitable if still
>>disappointing. Open of course means that an unlicensed version of software
>>must always exist, for free.
In the USA, as soon as you write something, including software, its copyright belongs to the author unless/until it is assigned or licensed or specifically released into the public domain. Software that has no license you can find is a problem, as rights to it belong to its source (perhaps most often the author) and don't belong to anybody else. If someone uses it without getting a license to it, she/he stands the chance the copyright holder could claim compensation for its use.
A second matter is there is no requirement that "free" software, "free" as in "freedom," be available for "free," as in "free beer." Using "free" to mean two different things is a source of confusion in some cases. Some license somewhere might prohibit charging, but the definitions published by the Free Software Foundation do not.
Cinnamon 2.6 – a Linux desktop for Windows XP refugees
Re: So Far they haven't F*cked it up!
>>I've tried a lot of software over the years, and multiple OSs. I don't crave novelty,
>>I just want to get work done.
My criterion for desirability is how boring it is. If it works without my having to twiddle something regularly, if the updates are easy and don't mess things up, if I can find what I'm looking for, and if I can use it to get done the things I need to do, it's boring. I like boring. If I wanted excitement, I'd use something that required a scan for immorality on a regular basis and the scanner required an update on a regular basis, that had major updates once in a while, and...am I being too subtle?
Here's to boring.
Re: Solid System Too Bad About No MS Office
No flame from me. I use Mint 17.1 KDE as my one and only system, as does my wife. We're happy to use LibreOffice for our uses. It's still a reality that a software company we won't name (the executives, lawyers, whoever) doesn't WANT us to have a fully compatible system. So they build in little roadblocks. This is also useful so fanbois can remind us that if FOSS were so good, they'd have full compatibility.
When a document has to go to my wife's school system, I break out my one and only W7 system, and fire up Office 2007 to verify that it works, and save it in that format. I will accept that this isn't a good solution for you and that what you're doing is the least awful option.
I've heard that Office will work under WINE, but I haven't tried it.
Re: Mint - upgrading
Correct, if you mean the "upgrade" system is not included for us. The Mint argument is that a version to version upgrade stands the chance of having things not quite work well. Since they pride themselves on producing a system that does work well, they recommend you do a fresh install.
It ends up being one of the YMMV things, to some extent. I've done upgrades that worked beautifully and done a few that just weren't right and what wasn't right aggravated me from day one. My guess is that because they aren't confident that upgrades are going to work well all the time (or some satisfactory fraction thereof) for every existing installation of Mint (lookee me! I made it do something it doesn't do for anybody else! It crashes a lot, but nobody has one like mine) they'd rather you started from scratch.
And, of course, upgrading is not required if you're just going to USE the computer. Mint 17 is a long-term support version, so it's going to be getting updates and patches, to fully functional for some years. It's people like me and my hunt for shiny-shiny who want the version upgrade.
May the fourth be with you: Torvalds names next Linux v 4.0
Cisco says GHOST is more Casper than Sleepy Hollow
Re: @artbristol - Unlikely?
/*
Reminds me of the time I was re-educating a developer on SQL injection, and asked him what would happen if there was a quote in a user-supplier input:
"Chances are less"
... sigh ...
*/
How many people did it take to get your hands off his throat? Will he ever walk again?
Brit gun nut builds working sniper rifle at home out of scrap metal
Agree and agree
First, I agree that the headline made me think he was melting down soup cans and railroad track to cast pieces for a gun. The title was more exciting than the article.
The actual effort was a noble work of restoration. Regrettably, such efforts, reported accurately, are remarkably dull and boring. Scrape this. Cover this rusty area with oil and rub with a coarse rag until it's shiny. Make this fit. When it doesn't fit, take it apart, do something to it, and try again. Repeat. Then do something else that has to be done that will similarly test your commitment to finish the project. Try to keep your emotions under control so parts being manipulated don't suddenly take flight across the shop.
My Ford Model T came to me from various sources in quantities of rusty pieces that had to be disassembled, cleaned, and fit together again. That your rifle came out functioning at 3 minutes of dispersion--and feeding from the magazine on top of that--reflects well on your attention to detail. I would bet you learned a great deal, in addition to developing quantities of patience.
Well done.
Furious GTA V gamers seek similar ban on violent, misogynistic title: the Holy Bible
Microsoft exams? Tough, you say? Pffft. 5-YEAR-OLD KID passes MCP test
Re: Biased?
And there is another problem: the moving target. I was at a university a few years ago and asked to develop a program preparing a person for whatever certification was supposed to make you walk on water to the hiring people. We were going to do it with the experiences, not the "test preparation" strategies. We invested considerable time and energy over a few months, designing the labs and specifying the equipment needed. When we were about to finalize the proposal, Microsoft announced the test would be eliminated at Christmas that year. At the time of the announcement, and it wasn't obvious what other tests would take its place and in some ways it looked like whack-a-mole.
So we went to the relevant administrator, who was annoyed at the situation and what it had cost to get us to that point, and not with us. (Can you guess why we picked him to report to?) After asking the appropriate questions about what we could salvage out of our efforts, he said he'd explain to the people uphill that a test prep program just didn't look like a good use of the university's resources.
Google Glass: Even the people who stand to MAKE MONEY from it hate the techno-specs
Walmart's $99 crap-let will make people hate Windows 8.1 even more
America, here's what the FCC's Rosenworcel REALLY thinks about your broadband
Re: If
>>roughly seven out of ten teacher homework assignments require internet access"
>>then seven out of ten homework assignments are failing to educate our students
>>and that's not a problem the FCC can solve.
When I was growing up back in the last millennium, my school had a pretty fair library and I could walk to a university library and use their stuff, even if I couldn't check it out. The problems are (1) the students who live in communities that don't have good library facilities and (2) the topics that aren't available in whatever libraries are available. The alternative to an Internet search may be selecting from a much more limited number of topics and having less breadth of material.
(We're talking United States) If the topic of a research paper is the early life of Abraham Lincoln, along with the general characteristics of the times, there probably won't be material in the local library. But there might be what she/he needs on the Internet if sufficient searches can be done. And searching the Internet is a valuable skill with so much available there--and the skill is only developed with practice. (That's something I try to explain to my wife, when she asks me to search for something for her. Give a man a fish...teach the man to fish...)
I was fortunate when I was teaching there were several "open" computer labs the students could use to do their homework in whatever subjects they had. Often the smaller public schools won't have the extra labs/computers availablel and even more frequently, the budget is such that there won't be funding to keep the labs open after school.
Lindsay Lohan ignores El Reg's tender twitterly advances
Thank you to the sponsors
I'd like to thank the people who are providing the support--money, equipment, and brains--for this effort. When I first saw it, I thought it was just somebody's weekend project, but reading more and seeing the comments of Lester Haines and others, I've found it to be much more serious. (And as a longtime Linux user and user of Samba, adding Andrew Tridgell to the mix definitely added to its status.)
Anyway, thank you to all the people who are making this possible.
The NO-NAME vuln: wget mess patched without a fancy brand
Meet Mr Gamification: He's got a NUDGE or two for you
Women in tech: Not asking for raises is your 'superpower' – Nadella. *chirp*...*chirp*
Sometimes it works the other way--rarely
A young lady who had worked for us while she was in university got a job with a major discount retailer (if you're an American, yes--that one), as they apparently needed females in that section of Info Tech. She got a $50,000 signing bonus and a salary about $10,000 higher than any other graduate I knew of. I will point out she was VERY sharp and good at her stuff and there was no hint it was because of anything inappropriate.
Re: By no means a Microsoft fan, but ...
Yes, in some cases discrimination was even a policy. I recall seeing a job posting (an incredible number of years ago) that gave the base salary and that a man would get $350/month more. Obviously, that was before the equality legislation came along, but more than once I've heard the thought that a woman might be less company-oriented because sometimes she might have to care for her family, she might be more concerned for her family than for the company, that she might move away if her husband got a job in another area, that she might have to have time off to have a baby... All of these and more say you're likely to get less value from a woman, at least to the person who was saying it.
The first salary in a job can make a difference, and if a woman were hired by somebody who thought that (nothing in writing or out loud, of course) the pay rate could stick. I'm a white male and I recently retired from a job where each hire contracted for his salary and that was the basis for what you were going to make as long as you were there. A 5% raise for everybody this year, 2% another year, etc. I was hired at a bad economic time so I didn't start out as high as some people had been a few years before and were a few years later. It was informally understood that if I wanted to get ahead, I'd need to take a job somewhere else and be hired at a new rate. I stayed and was fortunate that a few times I received raises to partly catch me up.
Yes, the ~78% is a bare number, without explanation or adjustments for differences. But I think I'd argue that in some significant number of cases, there probably can be found a sex-related factor in that difference.
Google in 'right to be forgotten' snub probe: Ireland tackles moans
Verizon: We're throttling broadband. FCC: WTF? Verizon: Lol, jk!
Re: The joke is on you! You need to read between the lines...suckers.
Worse than that--don't even THINK about trying a new plan.
Got a missive from a local dealer telling me I could save money. Went to the store and the lady manager did a paper and pencil and showed me it would save $60/month on the before taxes and fees charge, plus give me a new phone. So she entered my details and started the process. OOPS! You don't have the super-duper shared data plan, so the $60 off doesn't apply. And adding the plan adds $80, so you'd be $20 worse off.
Not surprisingly, I indicated I wasn't interested. Please cancel everything and put it back like it was before. So she canceled this and canceled that and OOPS! Let me call Verizon. Sorry, we can't reinstate your unlimited data plan I just took off because they don't offer that any more and they can't enter it on the computer. So you get a 2 gigs a month plan unless you pay (monthly) for an upgrade.
This is the second time I've been to one of that company's stores and worked with the manager and the second time I've ended up worse off as the result. Guess I learned my lesson.
The reason I was upgrading was my existing phone was getting flaky (a friend with the same phone was having the same problems) and decided to get a new one. Changing companies wasn't really an option because Verizon has better service in my area and I'm the "daddy" in a family plan. I went to the real Verizon store and had to pay for what I got, but at least they got it right on the first try.
And I felt like a sucker, of course.
NASA's rock'n'roll shock: ROLLING STONE FOUND ON MARS
600 school sysadmins sacked in New South Wales
Re: That sounds like American politics...
>>Funny I don't see managing computers anywhere in the Australian Teaching Standards.
Some attempts to implement don't work perfectly, either. My university in the USA created a Master of Science program in technology (I've forgotten the program name) to train teachers to to support the advanced stuff du jour and to also instruct others in using it--because it was often easier to give a teacher an extra job to do "in her/his spare time" than to hire a support person. So tech support was to be an assignment like coaching the cheerleaders or sponsoring a club or two.
I taught courses in computer troubleshooting, networking, and some Internet topics, including web design. My predecessor did what he could to make them academically honorable courses and taught things like digital vs analog power supplies, the seven layers of networking, etc. I looked at what such a tech support person was likely to actually do--and went to my department head to get his blessing. I had the students take a computer apart down to the screws, put it back together, and show me it worked--on the first day. I showed them how to format a drive and install an operating system (Windows, Linux, whatever was handy), set up a server, and crimp an end on a CAT5 cable. Heavens, no--I never claimed I thought it was graduate-level work in the sense of what I did for my doctorate. But I had a good time, they had a good time, and some of them are still being useful for their schools.
Alas, like many, the program was created and sent off to take care of itself. The buzzwords and hot topics change. It was like giving somebody a car and not verifying there was a source for gas money. This has been the case for university programs for decades. My lab equipment was scrounged from university surplus--which wasn't bad, as many of the schools had similar vintage and it wasn't a crisis if we broke something. And (win-win) I could have the students do the setups and troubleshooting. But there was nobody to push through updates to the program or to the courses. The web design course assumed that FrontPage (forgive me!) was already installed on the computers and it was expected that's what we'd use. (It's not where I stayed, of course.) There was a semester course in another department on making overhead transparencies. I don't know what they did over the years.
After fifteen years or so, the program was de facto dropped--it stayed on the books, but no more students came along. It's probably still on the books and in the catalog. I hope that most of the public schools are now hiring "real" tech support and funding them.
The Strippers, Unicorn Computers and Martian Watches of Computex
Re: Doomed?
I thought wireless charging was an expensive gimmick, myself...until our family's second broken/worn out charging port. Had they been wireless lay-it-on-the-charger devices, they would probably be still in service.
Of course, making the charging port more durable would have dealt with that, too, and probably for less money. Wonder how the manufacturer figured out how to make the connector on my phone last until just a few months after the contract was over.
Every little helps: Dirty MOLE BANDITS clean out Tesco ATM from BELOW
Happy 75th birthday, Adam Osborne
Scratch-built COSMAC ELF
Ah, the memories. When I was buying it the company called it a kit, but what I got gave me a lot of practice soldering sockets onto a circuit board so I could stick in CMOS chips. I also learned a LOT of troubleshooting with essentially no tools, which were way too expensive. Substitution are us and finding the chips to substitute involved a lot of looking.